Speaker 1: With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, many political experts
Speaker 1: speculate that President Trump would likely only be impeached if
Speaker 1: the Republicans decided his presence in the White House would
Speaker 1: wreck their own chances of re election in the mid
Speaker 1: term elections. Some predict that if the Democrats sweep the
Speaker 1: Republicans out of the House in the mid terms, a
Speaker 1: Democratic House majority would demand an impeachment inquiry against the
Speaker 1: president seem partisan to you. Our next guest, Keith Weddington,
Speaker 1: a professor at politics at Princeton University, has written a
Speaker 1: column in Law Fair Bloc entitled an impeachment should not
Speaker 1: be a partisan affair? So, Keith, leaving aside for a
Speaker 1: moment the question of whether impeachment is warranted under the Constitution,
Speaker 1: how do you get to the point in real life
Speaker 1: where it is not a partisan affair? Well, I think
Speaker 1: part of the question is whether or not the facts
Speaker 1: they're discovered, UM so clearly violate expectations about how an
Speaker 1: office should be conducted that people on both sides of
Speaker 1: the aisle um can agree that something has gone terribly wrong. Um.
Speaker 1: It's been commonplace that most for impeachments have been a
Speaker 1: federal judges who behaved badly, and in most of those
Speaker 1: cases we've had bipartisan impeachments. Presidents just raised a very
Speaker 1: tricky problem. From that perspective, Keith Um. One argument that
Speaker 1: people have been putting out for UH moving forth towards
Speaker 1: impeachment now is that there are norms that have to
Speaker 1: be defended. There are standards of behavior that we have
Speaker 1: for a president, and many of his critics say he
Speaker 1: has gone beyond those Uh, he has flouted those norms.
Speaker 1: What's the response to that to people who want to
Speaker 1: move quickly with impeachment, Well, I think it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to move quickly with impeachment. I mean, part of part
Speaker 1: of the effort has to be to build up the
Speaker 1: factual groundwork on what actually happened. You need to build
Speaker 1: UM widespread political support UM that what's happened is UM
Speaker 1: grave enough, and there are no other obvious solutions besides
Speaker 1: moving to an impeachment UM. So they just can't be
Speaker 1: a rush on that process. UM. But teaching somebody because
Speaker 1: they are dramatically outside the norms of behavior is one
Speaker 1: of the things UM that have UM driven impeachment efforts
Speaker 1: before UM, and part of The question is how the
Speaker 1: administration respond to that. Can the administration put its own
Speaker 1: house in order um uh and come back to more
Speaker 1: normal local practices so that impeachment doesn't seem necessary. Would
Speaker 1: you say that some of President Trump's recent um, the
Speaker 1: recent events or recent revelations about him, are a little
Speaker 1: more than outside the norm? For example, revealing classified foreign
Speaker 1: intelligence information to Russian government officials, UM, trying to influence
Speaker 1: former FBI Director Jim Comey away from the Russian investigation.
Speaker 1: Are those just a little bit beyond the norm? Those
Speaker 1: are certainly troubling UM and UH. Congress ought to UM
Speaker 1: make every effort to try to figure out exactly what
Speaker 1: happened in those cases and try to lay out the
Speaker 1: context of what happened to see UM, how reasonable an
Speaker 1: explanation there is for what happened, UM, Whether these are
Speaker 1: things that might create recurring problems, or whether these were
Speaker 1: one off mistakes that were made UM and have already
Speaker 1: been corrected in lots of ways. UM. So there's lots
Speaker 1: of important issues that would have to be thought through
Speaker 1: before necessarily jumping to impeachments. UM. But UM, you know
Speaker 1: those are those are clearly troubling UM and and um appropriately,
Speaker 1: I think Congress UM thinks that they ought to be
Speaker 1: looking at that carefully. Oh do you think that? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this if um uh, you know, Congresses,
Speaker 1: let's let's say Democrats take over the House at the
Speaker 1: next at the mid term election. Are you is your
Speaker 1: argument that they should not move for impeachment without pretty
Speaker 1: good assurance that you would get the it's two thirds
Speaker 1: of the Senate right to get to to get I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a pretty high standard. But is your argument
Speaker 1: that they should hold off until they're pretty confident they
Speaker 1: would actually uh get the conviction? Well, I think it
Speaker 1: depends on on what they're trying to accomplish, um uh.
Speaker 1: And so so, if for example, they really think, um,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely necessary that this president be removed before the
Speaker 1: next election, um, then trying to lay the groundwork for
Speaker 1: an actual conviction in the Senate becomes essential. Um. Eve. Instead,
Speaker 1: the goal is simply too you know, on the on
Speaker 1: the low sides or justcre political points, but but on
Speaker 1: a better way of approaching, as to think that we
Speaker 1: want to re establish an emphasize certain norms of behave
Speaker 1: You're um, it may not actually be necessary to get
Speaker 1: conviction or to try to guarantee that people will in
Speaker 1: fact change their behavior um and and behave in ways
Speaker 1: they're more appropriate. We will see what what's what happens
Speaker 1: with this. We're going to be discussing this many many times,
Speaker 1: i'm sure in the future. And all three presidents who
Speaker 1: have faced impeachment proceedings, the impeachments were brought by the
Speaker 1: opposing political party. Uh just a note there, thank you
Speaker 1: for being with us on Bloomberg Law. That's Keith Weddington,
Speaker 1: Professor of Politics at Princeton University,